Trump’s trade war, China and cost of living dominate Australia election as campaigning kicks off
By Todd Symons and Lex Harvey, CNN
(CNN) — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will fight for his job in a tightly contested election campaign expected to be dominated by cost-of-living concerns, the country’s relationship with China and jitters over the fast-changing global order under US President Donald Trump.
The election pits an incumbent who has forged a reputation as a pragmatic progressive against a former police detective and firebrand conservative who has been likened to something of a Trump lite.
Albanese visited Australia’s Governor-General Sam Mostyn on Friday morning, asking her to dissolve parliament and announcing an election date of May 3. Under law, Australia must hold federal elections every three years and May 17 was the last possible date the prime minister could have selected.
“Over the last few years, the world has thrown a lot at Australia. In uncertain times, we cannot decide the challenges that we will face. But we can determine how we respond,” Albanese told reporters Friday.
“Our government has chosen to face global challenges the Australian way – helping people under cost-of-living pressure while building for the future.”
Albanese’s left-leaning Labor party is seeking a second term in office but faces a fierce challenge from the center-right Coalition opposition, made up of the Liberal and National parties and led by Peter Dutton. Recent public polling puts the two sides neck-and-neck in the race to win a majority of the 150 seats in Australia’s House of Representatives.
Albanese, known domestically as “Albo,” was elected in 2022, pledging action on climate change, gender equality and political integrity. However, the Labor leader’s popularity took a nosedive amid a struggling economy and after a failed 2023 referendum to recognize Indigenous peoples in the Australian constitution.
While post-pandemic inflation has now started trending downward, the high cost of essential goods – such as groceries, housing and electricity – has hit Australians hard.
This week, Albanese’s government delivered its budget and rushed through 17.1 billion Australian dollars ($10.7 billion) in tax cuts, alongside other cost-of-living measures, in a bid to woo back voters left struggling in a sluggish economy.
The Coalition has labeled Labor’s tax cuts a “bribe” saying it would repeal them, if elected, and instead halve the fuel excise.
Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, Dutton said Australia faces a “sliding doors moment,” and warned of “another bleak three years” if the Labor party were returned to power.
A “Temu Trump”
During the five-week election campaign, both Albanese and Dutton will have to reckon with the economic and political uncertainty posed by the new US administration – with Trump’s next round of tariffs set to be announced on April 2.
After the US announced sweeping 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, Albanese called them “entirely unjustified” and “against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship.” But he said Canberra would not impose reciprocal levies. This week, he told national broadcaster the ABC he would invite Trump to visit.
Dutton has said his approach would be to meet Trump in person and do a deal, according to reports by Australian media.
The opposition leader has promised to slash permanent migration by 25% and recently touted the idea of holding a referendum on whether to allow politicians to deport dual citizens charged with serious crimes – an idea he has since walked back.
Should the Coalition win, Dutton plans to cut the number of government workers by 41,000 – the number added during Albanese’s term. He has also pledged to cut energy costs by requiring gas producers operating in Australia to reserve more supply for the domestic market. Then, there is the pledge to build seven nuclear power plants.
The similarities with Trump’s policy agenda have earned Dutton the nickname the “Temu Trump” – a reference to the cut-price online Chinese retailer, intended to deride Dutton as a low-rent version of Trump.
The moniker was even used in Parliament on Thursday, when rival Greens MP Stephen Bates asked Albanese about his plan to invite the US president to visit. “Prime minister, why would you invite Donald Trump to Australia when you have a Temu Trump sitting right next to you?” said Bates, prompting the house speaker to rule the question out of order.
Asked for his thoughts on the nickname on CNN affiliate Nine News’ The Pay Off podcast, Dutton said: “I’m my own person.”
In his remarks announcing the election Friday, Albanese said Australia didn’t need to borrow ideas from other countries “to make Australia even better and stronger.”
On Wednesday, the prime minister deployed Gen Z slang in Parliament to attack the Coalition’s policies, calling them “delulu with no solulu” – shorthand for delusional with no solution.
A softer stance on China
The 2022 election was dominated by concerns about China, at a time when ties had been severely tested and trade impacted. One conservative lobby group even rolled out billboards with pictures of China’s leader Xi Jinping and the words “the CCP says vote Labor.”
Dutton has been hawkish about China in the past. As the country’s defense minister in Scott Morrison’s government, he warned of a war with China and even earned a rebuke from Beijing after accusing the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of cyber attacks and suppressing free speech in a 2019 address.
“We categorically reject Mr. Dutton’s irrational accusations against China, which are shocking and baseless,” the Chinese Embassy in Australia said in a statement, provided to the Associated Press at the time.
Relations had soured in 2020 when the Australian government called for an investigation into the origins of Covid-19. China responded with sanctions against Australian exports, including beef, barley, wine, and rock lobster. The ban on live lobster imports alone was reported to cost Australian exporters 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion) a year.
Under Albanese, China-Australia relations have improved and those official and unofficial trade barriers have been lifted.
Dutton himself appears to have softened on China. In January, he declared “the relationship with China will be much stronger than it is under the Albanese government,” reported the ABC.
Analysts believe it’s an attempt to attract Chinese-Australian voters back to the Liberal party.
A review of the party’s failure to win the 2022 election highlighted the loss of support from voters of Chinese ancestry as a problem.
“There is a particular need for the Party’s representatives to be sensitive to the genuine concerns of the Chinese community and to ensure language used cannot be misinterpreted as insensitive,” the report said.
Dealing with China will remain a careful dance for Australia. In February, dozens of flights had to be diverted when China conducted live-fire naval drills off Australia’s coast. At the time, Dutton warned Beijing wanted to “normalize” such behavior and criticized Albanese’s response to it.
Hung parliament looms
With the polls so tight, analysts have said a hung parliament is a real possibility – which could leave either side in need of minor-party support to govern.
That could prove complicated. Currently 19 MPs from independent and minor parties sit on the crossbenches, and few have indicated a willingness to support a minority government.
“Minority government is coming,” Greens leader Adam Bandt said in a news conference Friday morning. “And with the major parties’ offering about as attractive as a dead fish, you can see why,” said Bandt.
Voting is compulsory in Australia for those over the age of 18, and the country’s electoral commission puts the number of eligible voters at 18.3 million people.
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